The council approved the budget at Tuesday’s meeting after several hours of debating and close votes, including two times in which the council voted down the budget.

If the council had not passed a budget, the city would have entered next fiscal year on Oct. 1 operating on last year’s budget.

Leading up to Tuesday’s City Council meeting, most of the debate between city leaders on the $235 million budget was over $247,500 for sporting events.

Mayor Sam Jones had proposed giving $47,500 to the Gulf Coast Classic and then reserving the other $200,000 for the council to give either to the Classic or to another sporting event.

Jones said Classic organizers did not have a manager or a plan for this year’s game at the time he finished the budget.

The Classic received $275,000 in city funding last year, up from $40,000 two years ago. But the game did not see a spike in attendance or economic impact for city businesses, and organizers have been unable to meet their financial commitments to the two universities involved.

Several members from the board that runs the Classic came to Tuesday’s meeting and requested the $200,000, saying the future of the game between Alabama State and Southern depends on it.

“(The Classic) is young. It’s a baby,” said Thomas Figures, a member of the board that runs the game. “You can’t ask a baby to raise itself. You have to buy it clothes, buy it shoes.”

But councilwoman Connie Hudson said the city should instead divvy up the $200,000 between the Senior Bowl and the Saenger Theatre in downtown Mobile, with the theater getting the remaining $85,000.

The amendment passed, with Hudson, Copeland, John Williams and Gina Gregory voting in favor of it. Councilman Clinton Johnson voted against it, and William Carroll and Fred Richardson abstained.

(Press-Register file/John David Mercer (left); Mary Hattler)Mobile City Council members Connie Hudson and John Williams approved additional money for the Senior Bowl in the city budget, but then refused to support the full budget.When it came time to vote on the full budget, though, Hudson and Williams both said they couldn’t support it because they believed the mayor’s attrition figure — savings created by city employees who retire or transfer — was overly optimistic, jumping from more than $12 million last year to more than $20 million in this year’s budget.

Copeland, Gregory and Richardson voted for the budget, Williams voted against it and Hudson, Carroll and Johnson abstained. The budget needs four votes to pass.

After a short recess, Williams asked the council to reconsider, and he changed his vote to a yes. But Richardson changed his vote to an abstention, and the budget still failed.

Finally, at the end of the meeting, Hudson said she would change her vote.

She said she believed Jones would have to raise taxes later this year, and she wanted to make clear that she would not support that.

Jones has not proposed any future tax increases, and he said after the meeting that he doesn’t plan to. Copeland was taken aback by Hudson’s statement.

“Let’s don’t spread the fear in public that tax increases are coming, because they’re not,” he said.

An exhausted council eventually passed the budget 6-0, with Clinton Johnson abstaining.

Copeland, who is the council president, later called Tuesday’s meeting a “three-ring circus.”